Wine 8 min

Croatia

On the man who made the wine that won the Judgement of Paris, and how to get there from Zagreb

In 1976 a winemaker in Napa Valley found himself reading a telegram informing him that a wine he had made had won an important tasting in Paris. There is one interesting catch that is rarely mentioned. The man who made the legendary Chardonnay wasn't American, nor was he French. He was Croatian.

In 1954 a young Miljenko Grgich packed up a suitcase with ten books about making wine, slipped thirty-two dollars in between the soles of his shoes and left communist Yugoslavia to try to make a life for himself in the United States. As an oenology student at the University of Zagreb his professor had described a visit to Napa valley as paradise and he wanted to see it for himself.

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